As well as being the year of many interesting new techs and platforms like Android Wear, Android Auto and Android TV, last year was also the year of the ‘bendables’. More affectionately known as #bendgate. This all began when the iPhone 6 Plus was put through some various bending tests to see how much pressure the device could handle, after earlier reports that the iPhone 6 was bending in pockets and so on. Well, if anyone thought that bendgate would end with the iPhone 6 then that would have been a mistake. With last month seeing the launch of one of this year’s biggest and most wanted smartphones, the Samsung Galaxy S6 (and Galaxy S6 Edge), it was only a matter of time before the S6’s got put through their bending test.
This is exactly what happened a few days ago when extended warranty service provider SquareTrade put the device through the bending mills. If you missed the earlier results, then it seems the Galaxy S6 Edge tended to begin seeing the effects of bending round about the same pressure level as the iPhone 6. Most notably though, the results showed the S6 Edge would completely break at a lower level of pressure than the iPhone 6 did.
Well, Samsung are not one to let such results go unspoken of, or not responded to. And this is exactly what has occurred this morning with Samsung releasing a statement (source link below) on the video and essentially asking for the test to be retaken and the results made public. In the statement, Samsung state that although the video showed the S6 Edge bending after 110lbf (pound force), the average user exerts only roughly half of that level of force (66lbf) and therefore, the test represented a condition “which rarely occurs under normal circumstances“. Secondly, Samsung notes that the test conducted by SquareTrade only recorded the strength (or bending/breaking point) of the front side of the device. Samsung state that as devices see the same level of pressure on both the front and back sides (and devices differ in their back capacity in the same way as they do with their front side), the test should be retaken with both back and front measurements recorded. Samsung finished up their statement by offering a video showing how they three-point bend test the Galaxy S6 Edge. You can see the video for yourself by clicking play below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKburDQAolA